Maritime Worker Monitor, a rank and file newsletter for maritime workers - Issue #8 • March 10, 2006; Editors: Jack Mulcahy, Portland • Mark Downs, Seattle • Jack Heyman, Oakland

There”s a lotta smoke being blown about the sale of marine terminals in U.S. East Coast ports from British-owned P&O to Arab-owned Dubai Ports World (DP World). Will the sale breach port security? If the anti-union Dubai port employers offered to train scabs in the Australian wharfie contract dispute in 1998 what will they do to the ILA longshoremen now? Are our jobs threatened by foreign-owned employers? Why is President Bush backing the sale of American ports?

Maritime workers need to take a close, careful look at this one. With all the orchestrated flag-waving going on it”s hard to see any difference between Republicans and Democrats, union officers and CEO”s, national security agents and politicians running for office.

To begin with the very nature of the maritime industry is international. It has been even before Columbus landed on the shores of America, trying to find a shorter route to the Spice Islands. Today, 95% of the dry cargo handled in U.S. ports is carried on predominantly foreign-flag vessels and most terminal operators in U.S. ports are foreign-owned. Our jobs depend on global trade. We”ve got a stake in fighting for union conditions on the docks and on the ships whether it”s U.S.-owned or foreign-owned. The same applies to outsourcing manufactured products like cars. The key is to make sure they”re union made. There are foreign-owned auto plants in the U.S. like Toyota in Fremont, California that produce union made cars. Then there are U.S.-owned companies like Ford that manufacture Saturn cars in non-union plants in Kentucky. Keep your eyes on the union label not the color of the flag.